It is further to be remarked that moated mounds corresponding precisely in pattern to those in England, are very numerous in Normandy. In size they vary within much the same limits. All have or had a proper ditch, some, as Briquessart and Des Olivets, stand in the centre of the court, some at one end, others on the edge. The court is sometimes circular, most commonly oblong, very rarely indeed rectangular. The outer enclosures have their ditches, which communicate with those of the inner defences. M. de Caumont gives a list of fifty-four of these mounds, within a radius of sixty miles from Caen, and since he wrote many more have been observed. These also were, from an early period, the seats of great landowners, and from very many of them came the knights and barons who accompanied William to England, and there settled in posts very similar. Sir F. Palgrave gives a list of 131 of these fortified residences in the Cotentin, the Avranchin, and the Bessin, which includes only six of those mentioned by de Caumont. A large number of those earthworks seem never to have had, at any time, defences of masonry. Others, upon the mounds, had Norman shell keeps.
Besides the British theory, these mounds have been claimed as sepulchral. It is of course possible that such mounds as Arundel or Marlborough may have been originally sepulchral, and therefore older than their defensive additions. To few if any has the crucial experiment of opening them been applied; but this is not a very probable explanation, and could certainly not be applied to those mounds as a class. Among many other reasons for taking this view, it may be observed that sepulchral mounds are always artificial, whereas moated mounds are often natural, and still more frequently partly so. No one could suppose Hawarden, or Dunster, or Montacute, to be sepulchres, and yet these are as much moated mounds as Arundel and Tonbridge. Moreover, sepulchral mounds are not often placed where a defensive work is obviously needed, and most rude nations are superstitious, and would object to dwell upon or around a grave. The Tynewald in Man, Cwichelmsley Knowe in Berkshire, and a work upon the Clyde in Lanarkshire, are the only known sepulchral mounds which have been employed for other purposes, and of these the two former are judicial, not residential. The barrows round York, though smaller than most burhs, are big enough to have carried residences, but do not appear to have been so employed. Moreover, the common testimony of the country has generally given to the moated mounds some name, such as Castle Hill or Burh, indicative of their military origin.
It has been observed that moated mounds are usually near the parish church. This might be expected, since the parish, like the manor, was usually a private estate, and the church was originally provided by the lord for the accommodation of his tenants and himself.
There is a class of mounds due probably to the same people with those above described, but very seldom moated, and not usually accompanied by base courts and enclosures. These are the moot-hills, used for civil purposes, as the holding of courts-leet, of which the mound at Barton, in Northamptonshire, is a fine example. They are not uncommon. There is one near Kenilworth, close to Stoneleigh Church, one at Hawick, one called the Mote Hill, in Hamilton Park; there is also one on the right bank of the Neckar, below Heidelberg. Sometimes they are called toot-hills; hence Tothill Fields, though the mound is gone.
In claiming for these moated mounds a northern and in Britain an English origin it would be too much to assert that in no other class of works is the mound employed, or by no other people than the Northmen; but it may be safely laid down that in no other class of early fortification does the mound occur as the leading and typical feature. In Roman and Norman, and possibly in purely British works, the mound may be occasionally seen, like the cavalier in the works of Vauban, as at Kenilworth, or as an outwork, as at Caerphilly, or it may be employed to cover or divide an entrance; but such mounds are of irregular shape, mere detached and elevated parts of the general bank, and not likely to be confounded with the moated mound described above.
Appendix.
Vita Sti Johannis Epis: Morinorum. Ob: 1130.
[Acta Sanctorum, Januarii 27.]
Contigit ut in villa, cui Morchem vocabulum est, hospitii mansionem haberet [Johannes]. Erat autem secus atrium ecclesiae munitio quaedam quam castrum vel municipium dicere possumus valde excelsa, juxta morem terrae illius, a domino villae ipsius multis retro annis extructa. Mos namque est ditioribus quibuscunque regionis hujus hominibus et nobilioribus, eo quod maxime inimicitiis vacare soleant exercendis et caedibus, ut ab hostibus eo modo maneant tutiores, et potentia majore vel vincant pares, vel premant inferiores, terrae aggerem quantae praevalent celsitudinis congerere eique fossam quam late patentem, multamque profunditatis altitudinem habentem circumfodere, et supremam ejusdem aggeris crepidinem vallo ex lignis tabulatis firmissime confacto undique vice muri circummunire, turribusque, secundum quod possibile fuerit, per gyrum dispositis, intra vallum, domum vel, quae omnia despiciat, arcem in medio aedificare, ita videlicet ut porta introitus ipsius villae non nisi per pontem valeat adiri, qui ab exteriori labro fossae primum exoriens est in processu paulatim elevatus, columnisque binis et binis, vel etiam trinis altrinsecus per congrua spatia suffixis innixus, eo ascendendi moderamine per transversum fossae consurgit, ut supremam aggeris superficiem coaequando oram extremi marginis ejus, et in ea parte limen prima fronte contingat.
In hujus-modi ergo asylo Pontifex, cum suo frequenti et reverendo comitatu hospitali, quum ingentem populi turbam tam in ecclesia, quam in atrio ejus, manus impositione, et sacri Chrismatis unctione confirmasset, ut vestimenta mutaret, eo quod coemiterium humandis fidelium corporibus benedicere statuisset ad hospitium regressus est, unde illo, ut propositum perficeret opus, iterum descendente, et circa medium pontis, triginta quinque vel eo amplius pedum, altitudinem habentis, certa de causa subsistente, populique non modica caterva ante et retro, dextra lævaque circumstipante, continuo antiqui machinante hostis invidia, pons ponderi cessit, et dissipatus corruit, magnamque illorum hominum turbam cum episcopo suo ad ima dejicit; fragore autem ingenti e vestigio consecuto, transtris, trabibusque tabulatis, et ruderibus magno cum impetu pariter et strepitu concidentibus: nebula quaedam tenebrosa ita omnem illam ruinam repente circumfudit, ut quid ageretur vix quisquam discernere potuerit.